My to-don’t list

Post navigation

I read a free Dan Pink pdf called the ‘FLIP Manifesto’ last week. I won’t go into the details as there’s lots of good advice in it but the thing which struck me the most was the notion of a ‘To Don’t’ list. Dan listed a few of the things which have been on his own list in the past and it made me think about my own ‘To-Don’t’ list. The three don’ts I came up with were:

• Spend ages on the internet
• Be awake after 11pm
• Drink coffee after 3pm

Hrmmmmm, so two of these are related to sleep, and are also trying to achieve the same thing as my pseudo New Years resolution list. This made me wonder if there was any point in even writing these out onto paper as it would just be a waste of good ink as I clearly haven’t achieved it via my other list. Then I pondered it a little more and decided that if anything this emphasises the importance of sleep in my life and makes it even more obvious to me that I should start putting some of my ‘aims’ into action!

As for the internet thing, I’ve been guilty of this for years. I start browsing and it just dominoes into click after click after click after click and then I wonder how an hour has passed and yet I still haven’t bought anything on Etsy, chosen a knitting pattern on Ravelry, bought clothes/books/music, kitchen stuff, etc, learnt anything new and/or less depressing about Rovers and I haven’t had the slightest interest in other people’s facebook status updates anyway. So, it needs to stop. If I’m honest there’s probably something (more than) slightly OCD about it too.

Step 1: I’ve already deleted my Etsy app from my phone.
Step 2: I’m going to get Mr.J to change my facebook password for me. I’ve done ‘no facebook’ for a week before and I didn’t miss it that much and I’m seriously considering deactivating my account altogether as I’m getting more paranoid about personal information.
Step 3: The rest of the internet is a little harder as there is often genuine reason for going on the internet initially. So, I’m going to adopt a completely anal (obviously), two-pronged approach. Prong one will be to write a list of what I’m going to do/look at before I go online and then hopefully the list will look so pathetic if I write ‘look at pretty things on Etsy’ that I will think twice before doing it. Prong two will be to put a 10 minute countdown alarm on my phone when I start browsing and then when it goes off if I’ve finished with the things on the list then it will be time to stop.